


Baby, Kiss It Better

by justbecauseyoubelievesomething



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Disabled Character, Co-leaders, F/M, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Snowball Fight, The Delinquents, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28375794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbecauseyoubelievesomething/pseuds/justbecauseyoubelievesomething
Summary: “What if we can’t save them?” he asks and Raven tightens her grip on his sleeve in response. “What if all this… running ourselves into the ground… ends up all being for nothing?”She turns the words over in her brain, but they’re nothing she hasn’t asked herself, nothing she doesn’t think about during the sleepless nights. What if this is simply the end? After all their fighting, all the work…She slides her hand down Bellamy’s sleeve until she finds the calloused palm of his hand and then she intertwines her fingers with his ice cold ones and squeezes lightly.“We’ll still be here.” She pauses and makes sure she believes the words herself. “We can still save us.”He doesn’t look over at her, but he squeezes back. “I guess we’ll live with that.”
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Raven Reyes
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Ravenbell New Year Fanfiction Exchange (2020)





	Baby, Kiss It Better

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @autobot for the fantastic prompts! I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it! Happy Holidays to you, my friend!
> 
> Prompt: Delinquent Winter: It’s snowing, so the delinquents decide to start a snowball fight. Raven and Bellamy really go at each other. Bellamy ends up getting a cut on his lip from an icy snowball, and Raven decides to remedy that with a kiss. 
> 
> Title from Cardigan by Taylor Swift

Raven knows as soon as her eyelids flutter open, before she can even process the fiery pain still gnawing through her hip or the awful numbness streaking up and around her knee, that Clarke is gone. She knows it in the way that Bellamy sits just off to her left; head bent, elbows jutting into his knees, fingertips pressed too hard against his pursed lips. She knows it in the silence, the emptiness, once filled by a commander with golden hair and a cold, fiery rage. Clarke is gone.

“You look like shit,” Raven manages to croak and Bellamy lifts his head quickly enough for her to catch a hesitant smile flutter across his features.

He clears his throat and she hears the soft catch as he murmurs, “You too.”

And there’s something that passes between them, a hardening of their gazes, a tightening of lips, that signals an understanding. They do this together. With or without her.

  
  
  


Abby tells her she pushes too hard, but Raven can’t stop pushing. Sinclair tells her she’s already done so much, but she knows there’s always more to do. Wick stands in her way over and over again, so she finally tells him to leave. She’s needed everywhere and she can’t stop for anyone. There are expeditions to Mount Weather to help organize, scrap to sort, station repairs to manage. They bring back an entire Rover with working parts and Sinclair puts her in charge of going over it with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it’s safe for the scouts to use. She hobbles at first, then learns to hide it so it’s little more than a stiff limp. It grates at her when she falls into bed at night and stares sleepless at the ceiling, that she isn’t allowed to be in pain, that she must hide it away so that people allow her to be functional. She hates them all in a small, secret way and yet she keeps working because they would fall apart without her.

There’s only one other person in camp that understands, one other that doesn’t look at her with pity when her bad leg starts to drag at the end of a long day. So when he doesn’t come in with the hunting team one night for dinner, Raven rolls herself out from under the Rover, puts her tools away, and goes looking for Bellamy.

It’s cold outside. Winter is swiftly moving in, sinking its teeth into their unprepared camp. Raven’s uneven footsteps pass over the frozen mud, trampled in all directions outside of the main station door. The wall is growing, slowly but surely. Two short guard towers flank either side of the open gateway and Raven grimaces as she notices the guards on duty are wrapped from tip to toe in thick coats, huddled down to hide their faces from the wind. They don’t notice her pass between the towers and out into the open.

Bellamy stands with his back to the camp, legs apart, arms crossed. The icy wind tousles his hair and Raven thinks it’s getting too long. She should cut it soon, so it doesn’t get in his eyes while he’s out hunting. He scans the treeline, watching as the vast tangle of brown-green branches are pushed back and forth by the uncertain gusts of wind. From the edge of camp, the forest looks like a brown sea, rolling and tossing in stormy waves against the dark threatening blue of the evening sky.

Raven steps up to Bellamy’s side, biting the inside of her cheek as the wind whips her ponytail back and draws a trail of goosebumps along the side of her neck.

“I saw the team brought back a deer,” she offers gently, hoping to break him out of his pensive trance.

Bellamy’s jaw tenses with familiar frustration. “It took us way too long to track it down. Then when we finally caught up to it, they all started whooping and hollering. Scared off any other game within five miles.”

Raven clenches her fist against the side of her leg. “I’m sorry, Bell.”

He sighs and runs one hand over his face. “I just don’t know how to get it through to them. They’re still just stumbling around out here and I’m trying so hard to teach them, but…”

“They don’t understand,” she finishes for him. She thinks back to the Dropship, to a piecemeal wall and makeshift weapons. Desperation and the pure joy of survival. “How can they understand? They didn’t come down first. They don’t know….”

She trails off, not sure how to convey in words what those first steps on the ground were like. But Bellamy knows. He always knows.

They watch the last sliver of burning sunlight disappear below the horizon and Raven feels a rough pang of achiness in the joints of her bad leg.

“The weather’s changing fast. Let’s get inside with the others.”

Bellamy sighs again, a deep growl in his chest that sounds more anger than sadness, but he turns and links his arm through her’s as they make their way back to Alpha.

“What if we can’t save them?” he asks and Raven tightens her grip on his sleeve in response. “What if all this… running ourselves into the ground… ends up all being for nothing?”

She turns the words over in her brain, but they’re nothing she hasn’t asked herself, nothing she doesn’t think about during the sleepless nights. What if this is simply the end? After all their fighting, all the work…

She slides her hand down Bellamy’s sleeve until she finds the calloused palm of his hand and then she intertwines her fingers with his ice cold ones and squeezes lightly.

“ _ We’ll _ still be here.” She pauses and makes sure she believes the words herself. “We can still save  _ us _ .”

He doesn’t look over at her, but he squeezes back. “I guess we’ll live with that.”

  
  
  


Jasper stumbles into her as she’s packing up her tools for the night, his arms swinging loosely at his sides.

“M’soory,” he slurs, breath thick with moonshine. He tries to angle himself to step around her, but even the effort of turning is too much and he trips again. This time her bad knee can’t hold them both up and they fall backwards heavily. Raven hears more than feels the back of her head hit the side of the Rover, a solid and resounding ‘ _ thunk _ ’. Her hands hit the metal flooring hard enough for her palms to instantly sting as her tool box clatters off to the side, tools sliding in all directions. Jasper’s spidery limbs are everywhere, pressing her down as he flounders.

“Sorry, sorry!”

“Stop moving,” she hisses as his full weight comes down on her knee for the third or fourth time. He’s either too drunk to comprehend her words or simply doesn’t care.

Suddenly there’s a rough shriek torn from Jasper’s throat as he’s grabbed from behind and unceremoniously tossed somewhere. Monty’s voice is somewhere off to the side, berating his best friend. Miller’s voice chimes in and there’s the rise and fall of an argument shaping up between the three of them. But Raven forces her gaze to stay on Bellamy as he kneels in front of her, features still tight with anger.

“Can you stand?” he asks, words clipped off at the ends like he’s holding something back.

She sucks in a breath and nods quickly, so he stands back to give her room. She draws her legs up closer to her body and pushes up with her arms, hoping to stand in one swift motion. Instead, searing hot pain flashes from the back of her skull forward against her eyes at the same time that her knee buckles completely.

Her cry of pain is instinctive, pure reaction, and she hates herself for it.

Bellamy is back on his knees next to her before she can blink. “Put your hand on my shoulder.”

Raven is too aware that the background argument has ground to a halt, her friends all staring at her struggles in dismay. She attempts to snap at them, but her mouth is unnaturally dry and all that comes out is a groan as another wave of pain ripples through her skull.

“You’ve got this,” Bellamy offers simply and she focuses on his voice long enough to hook her arm around his shoulder. He stands slowly, pulling her weight up with him, but it still makes her so dizzy she’s afraid she’s about to vomit the meager contents of her stomach all over him.

Jasper is standing back, Monty’s protective arm looped around him. He blinks at her slowly, unsurely. “M’sorry, Rae…”

She waves her hand at him dismissively and keeps her head down, fighting through the spinning sensation. She feels Bellamy tense, neck muscles growing tight under her arm.

“Go tell Abby,” he says quietly and she’s not sure why that feels like a punch in the gut, but it does. She’s too tired to fight though, especially with him, so she lets him lead her away from the main room and the concerned stares of their friends. The walk to the infirmary is so familiar she could do it with her eyes closed, but Bellamy doesn’t let her go until they’re at an empty bed and she’s firmly seated on the edge.

She closes her eyes as he steps away and swallows the nausea. “Thanks.”

When he doesn’t respond, she opens her eyes again, wondering if he slipped away already. He’s staring at her, face relaxed into something vulnerable. Open. Frightening.

“I’m okay,” she says, in answer to a question he didn’t ask. His jaw tenses. They both know it’s a lie.

Raven curls in on herself achingly slow. “I’ll  _ be _ okay,” she amends. “You can go. I know you still have work to get done.”

Bellamy shifts slightly. “Abby isn’t even here yet.”

Raven almost rolls her eyes before deciding against adding to her headache. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“I never said you did.”

“Well that’s good. I’d hate for this to be a misunderstanding.”

“Me too.”

As her tone grows colder, so does his. She feels the bite of the words in the pit of her stomach.

“Just go, Bellamy.”

He takes a step backwards, arms crossed, but he doesn’t quite turn away. He has his mask up again now. For once, Raven can’t read him. That frightens her too.

“I want…” He swallows thickly, gaze darting up and down her. “I want to help.”

It’s as close to pity as she’s ever gotten from him. Another stab in her gut.

“You can’t fix everything,” she snaps before she can stop herself. The words echo in the small space between him as he presses his lips together into a pale line and gives her a tense nod.

He leaves and takes all the warmth in the room with him. Raven curls into a ball on her side and does equations in her head to hold back the tears. From the concussion or from the wall she just threw up between her and her best friend, she’s not sure. She only knows that it hurts and there’s no one to fix it.

  
  
  


The weeks pass slowly. People are cold and hungry; a bad combination. Raven feels like a ghost, hovering over one project before vaguely moving to another. The concussion is healed, but her brain still feels blurry and scattered. Thankfully, fewer people seem concerned with her as they grow more concerned with themselves. Everyone draws inwards, winter pushing each of them into their own little orbs. They drift past each other in hallways and bounce off each other dimly at meal times, but no one feels quite real anymore.

Bellamy spends more time out with the hunting teams, but the extra time yields no extra meat. Raven feels empty. Useless. That feeling sits bitter and ironic in the back of her throat and makes her want to throw her wrench through the Rover windshield.

What’s the point of helping if there’s not a single person that wants it? What is there left to fix?

Jasper drinks. Monty scolds. Miller looks vaguely worried. Raven keeps herself cold and distant and watches the cracks between them all widen. Helpless.

  
  
  


Snow. Real, white, fluffy snow.

Raven watches in awe as the first flake is joined by another, floating almost lazily down from the overcast sky. Then another, then another and soon the air is full of white flurries.

They’ve all seen it in pictures and old films, but to see it in person is different. Something never quite captured.

Raven slowly extends her hand, palm up, out from under the overhang. A snowflake lands and immediately melts into nothing but a glistening dot of dampness on her skin. A giggle bubbles out from her chest and she carefully steps out into the open and lifts her face to the sky. The snowflakes swirl crazily above her, parting like a curtain around her upturned face. They brush off her cheekbones and the tip of her nose, leaving tiny wet streaks.

Miller steps up beside her, grin stretching from ear to ear. He opens his mouth and then barks a sharp laugh. “Catch them on your tongue!”

Raven giggles again at the sight of him with his tongue outstretched. “Idiot,” she murmurs fondly. But seconds later, she sticks out her own tongue and is pleasantly amused by the cold tickle of a snowflake landing.

Monty spins in a circle, his feet disturbing the quickly growing layer of snow on the ground. “This is…”

“Amazing.” Jasper blinks slowly, delicate snowflakes crystalizing in his long eyelashes. He looks at Raven and a small smile drifts across his lips. “It’s amazing.”

Pure euphoria overtakes her. She throws her arms out like Monty and spins in a slow circle. Like coming to earth for the first time, dancing on the solid ground, drinking everything in at once. She wants to roll in the soft snow. She wants to run and jump and scream with joy, the way the youngest children are starting to as they pour at the main door. She wants to imprint the vision of every last dancing flake on her memory. 

She crouches, ignoring the twinge in her knee, and scoops up a handful of fluffy snow. The wet crystals compact under the warmth of her hands, leaving her with a small, icy ball. Another winter memory, learned from old Ark footage and stories that never seemed real. Raven smirks.

And spins to throw the snowball straight into Miller’s chest.

It smacks against his leather jacket with a satisfying wet sound, leaving small bits of ice clinging to his zipper. He blinks at her and she laughs.

“Oh, it is  _ on _ , Reyes.”

He bends to scoop up his own snowball and Raven scrambles to get around the corner of the station, still overcome with laughter. Behind her she hears Jasper yell in triumph and Monty yell in outrage as another wet smack hits home. She gathers herself for a split second and then pops her head out from behind the corner of the wall, narrowly avoiding Miller’s snowball. It sails past her cheek and hits the fence behind her.

She sticks out her tongue. “No wonder you’re not on the hunting teams, Miller. You couldn’t hit a deer if it walked up to you and pulled the trigger!”

“Says the scaredy-cat hiding behind an entire building!”

The taunts and jabs fly as thick as the snowballs as the former delinquents duck and weave their way in and out of Arkadia’s small buildings and along the outer wall. The snow edges to a faint sprinkle, the storm slowly moving northward. Raven’s feet slide over the slick snow as she runs back and forth, breathless and red-cheeked. Melted snow begins to seep through her pants and the edges of her shirt sleeves. Her socks are basically balls of ice. But she keeps scrambling through the soft snow, finding new hiding places, whipping her snow missiles out into the open and grinning as they find their marks.

Her knee throbs mercilessly, but no one comments on her increasingly erratic steps. No one is concerned about her for the first time in forever. Miller doesn’t give a shit about her limp as he chases her across the camp, revenge intent in his eyes.

She  _ loves _ it.

Another snowball whistles past and splatters out in the open area beyond the gate. Monty scrambles into the small space between the two storage sheds, hunkering down beside Raven.

“Jasper is… possessed!” He shakes his head vigorously and chunks of snow fall from his hair.

Raven adds another perfectly rounded snowball to her small arsenal. “Well you’re responsible for him. I’ve got Miller on my ass.”

“You know that’s not fair! Miller can’t throw worth anything and…”

“Aha!”

Monty yelps in surprise and shoves Raven forward, both of them trampling over several of her snowballs much to her disgust. Behind them Jasper pelts Monty’s retreating shoulder blades with snow, laughing maniacally.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” he intones dramatically.

Miller pops around the far side of the station, a wicked grin on his face and Raven urges Monty towards the gate. “Go, go, go!”

They spill out into the open, shrieking and cackling. The carefully formed snowballs devolve into open palmed sprays of snow. Monty finally gets Jasper back, shoving an entire handful down the back of his neck. Miller’s eyes light up with the idea and Raven spends the next ten minutes carefully fending him off, essentially dodging in a giant circle.

She ducks down in a low dip just a little ways from the gate and takes the opportunity to mold a larger snowball than usual, packing all the half-melted ice she can reach into it. She counts to ten in her head, steadying her breaths and listening to Miller’s floundering footsteps circle around and then slowly approach.

Eight, nine, ten…

She pops up and throws her ice ball as hard as she can, the weight of it leaving her hand faster than she expected. 

She opens her mouth expectantly to laugh and then stands staring open-mouthed at Bellamy lying in the snow, cradling his jaw. The other returning hunters blink at their fallen leader in confusion and then up at Raven and then back at Bellamy.

“Shit.” 

She tries to run to him, but the snow is slippery and she’s already so cold and tired. Suddenly it feels like her leg is made of lead, anchoring her down as she watches Bellamy slowly sit up and shake his head. There’s snow caked across his face and Raven can only stare in horror as a bloom of red blood spreads across the white.

“Shit, shit, shit!” She scrambles forward as Bellamy eases himself to his feet, her legs threatening to give out from under her as she lunges forward.

“I’m sorry! So sorry!” She trips into him and he’s not so shaken that he can’t take her weight, easily catching her before she goes sprawling. Her fingers curl into the stiff shoulders of his jacket and his left hand splays comfortably across the small of her back, holding her upright. He tips his head, gaze curious as it roves over her face. Caught off guard in this moment, the anger he’s been wearing like a cloak is mysteriously absent. He searches her face in the infinitesimal space between breaths, dark eyes warm and deep with unspoken words.

Then his face shutters. She sees the way his pallor greys over, the way his gaze flickers into something stony and unreachable. He reaches up with his free hand and swipes away the snow clinging to his lips and chin. The back of his hand comes away shiny with blood.

Raven moves one hand towards his face, fingers shaking. “Your lip is bleeding.”

“Yeah,” he grunts. “I noticed.”

“Let me help.”

He twists his head slightly as her fingertips graze his jaw, moving just enough to keep her away from his torn lip. She feels a faint stirring of anger.

“Just let me try and fix it!”

His fingers dig into her back and her breath catches in the back of her throat.

“You can’t fix everything.” His eyes are pinpoints of darkness, threatening to bore twin holes through her skull. “That’s what you said, right?”

She has no response to that.

So she surges forward and kisses him.

His lips are chapped and cold and the split in his lower lip is still bleeding so at first all she tastes is blood and cold. Her lips are dry too and it’s not her best kiss. Not by a long shot.

Then his hand tightens impossibly against her back and he’s kissing her back. Bellamy is kissing her.

There were kisses that one night, in his tent by the firelight. When she could lose herself in the soft golden glow and the still-new smell of earth around her. It felt like a dream or a nightmare. Something feverish and unreal that was never meant to see the stark light of day.

But now Bellamy’s other hand is coming up to cup her cold cheek as his tongue grazes the inside of her lip and she shivers because they’re standing in the bright snow, kissing for all the world to see and she’s realizing that she doesn’t care.

She’s realizing she likes it.

Her fingers come to rest somewhere along his jawline and she rakes her nails lightly through his stubble just to feel the way his chest rumbles with his responsive growl and he kisses her again and again in approval. Her feet are blocks of ice and she can hear Miller cackling somewhere behind her, but Bellamy is kissing her and she’s kissing him and it’s more joyously desperate than anything else earth has given her.

When Bellamy finally pulls back for air with a low gasp, his hand stays protectively curled against her back. His thumb traces the slight curve of her cheek, down to the corner of her lips and she’s tempted to haul him forward for another round.

But their friends are laughing and she thinks Jasper is slow-clapping and the hunting team is even chuckling. Raven meets Bellamy’s stare and they both start giggling, the laughter infectious.

“Should we…?” She inclines her head back towards Arkadia.

Bellamy takes her hand in answer, fingers slotting together so easily it makes her feel giddy. She shivers keenly at the loss of his touch on her back as they fall into step together, but he squeezes her hand gently and she squeezes back. A wordless acknowledgement. They understand. They’ll always have each other.

They can live for that.

The others group together loosely to follow them into camp, jostling and joking, but largely leaving Bellamy and Raven in their own radius. Raven makes a mental note to thank Miller later for backing down from their duel. Maybe she can bump up his next work order.

She glances sideways at Bellamy and catches him running his tongue across his lower lip. He hesitates at her look.

“What?”

“What, what?” she asks, poking him with her elbow.

He smirks and the tip of his tongue darts across his lip again. “I think you did fix it, after all.”

She feels a comforting blush start at the base of her throat and she leans her head against his shoulder. “Hmm… maybe I should still take another look at it when we get inside?”

“Oh, definitely.”   
“Definitely.”


End file.
